‘Projecting’ piece on display as winner of EAC’s ‘Hybridity’ art show

Julia Biggs, jbiggs.edwi@gmail.com

Updated
12:58 pm CST, Thursday, November 8, 2018

Dan Van Tassel’s Best of Show Award-winning piece entitled “Projecting” sits on display in Edwardsville Arts Center’s “Hybridity” exhibit, and is available for public viewing in the center’s main gallery through Nov. 24. The center is located at 6165 Center Grove Road in Edwardsville and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and is closed Sunday through Tuesday.

Dan Van Tassel’s Best of Show Award-winning piece entitled “Projecting” sits on display in Edwardsville Arts Center’s “Hybridity” exhibit, and is available for public viewing in the center’s main gallery through Nov. 24. The center is located at 6165 Center Grove Road in Edwardsville and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and is closed Sunday through Tuesday.

Edwardsville — Over two dozen artists’ pieces are currently a part of the Edwardsville Arts Center’s “Hybridity” exhibit, available for viewing through Nov. 24.

This juried show, curated by Joe Page and Brigham Dimick, is about art that explores mixture or “hybridity.” This can include art forms that derive from cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary art practices as well as art that deliberately blurs the distinctions between traditional mediums.

EAC Gallery Manager Carolyn Tidball explained that this juried show drew artists from all over the country. “We have a lot of local artists. A lot of St. Louis artists as well as people from as far as Kentucky and New York. People applied from all over and shipped their work out here.”

Tidball noted that the Best of Show Award, $150 in cash, was awarded to Dan Van Tassel for his piece “Projecting.” “It’s on several pedestals in the middle of the gallery. His piece is made of all kinds of things including resin, glass bulbs, cicada shells, dried flowers, and thread. It’s definitely a mixed media piece,” she said.

Van Tassel described in his artist statement what influenced him to make what proved to be the winning piece.

“I am fascinated with how human beings interpret information, particularly when presented with a situation or idea that requires them to break their preconditioned notions of what the reality of an object or situation is,” he wrote.

“The ways which we interact with one another and the environment which we exist in is a curiosity to me. This curiosity is furthered in how each of these elements affects the other. These relationships exist in their most primal state through the notion that what we do affects where we exist, but where we exist can also affect what we do,” Van Tassel further noted. “The focus of my interest in this relationship lies in the ‘what if’ which is unique to human perception.”

Van Tassel pointed out that through this psychology of connection, a narrative is formed in the work. “By displaying works which have this implied narrative quality, I hope to create visual tension, as well as to speak to a particular metaphor unique to each individual work,” he added. “On the surface, the works I create are playful and beg for interaction. While at the same time they are also provocative, and at times even repulsive in their content. It is my intention to utilize these elements of our humanity to emphasize the beauty in how humans interpret information, including information that can make us feel uncomfortable.”

“Hybridity” will be on display in the main gallery of the Edwardsville Arts Center through Nov. 24. Concurrently in the student gallery, art made by students from local private schools is on display.

The EAC, located at 6165 Center Grove Road in Edwardsville, is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and is closed Sunday through Tuesday.